Monday, June 13, 2011

New logo: Action on Hearing Loss

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) is an organisation which supports deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1911, and last week, on June 9, it celebrated its 100th anniversary by launching a completely new identity and changing its name "Action on Hearing Loss".

The namechange was first announced last year. Although the new name is now used in all communication, the organisation will keep its royal status, and the legal name will still be "Royal National Institute for Deaf People".

According to the organisation, the new name "better represents the full scope of the charity’s work for a world where hearing loss doesn't limit or label people, where tinnitus is silenced – and where people value and look after their hearing". It is also acknowledged that the name RNID could easily be mixed up with other organisations. For example, the corresponding organisation for blind people is called RNIB.

The new visual identity was created by the British design agency Hat-trick. The basic idea behind the cyan and magenta logo is to underline the positive (taking action and hearing) and striking out the negative (the loss of hearing). The strikeout on the word "loss" adds a darker colour where the line and the letters meet. This effect has been used to create a bunch of icons, a few of them can be seen further down on this page.

The final RNID logo.

RNID's logo with the blue dot and the three concentric yellow arches was first introduced around 2002. That logo got a refresh at some point which made it more visually pleasant.